Chase Your Dreams

Dreams are amazing. Now, I am not writing about the dreams you have at night where you are a pirate or running around a school full of missiles and guns or being chased by some crazy person in a mask. The dreams I am writing about are the ones we have when we are awake. These are the dreams of where we want our life to go or what we want to do. The most important dreams we have are the ones when we are awake.

Dreams give us hope. Dreams give us goals. Dreams motivate us. Dreams are what help us slog through another humdrum day. Dreams allow us to yearn for something bigger or better or different. Depending on the day, dreams can change. Some days, I dream of owning a food truck and other days a book store/coffee shop. Some days I dream of being a working writer and still in others, I dream of owning a quaint vegan bed and breakfast on the beach. In the same way food fuels our body, dreams fuel our mind.

The difficult thing about dreams is they require action. Without working towards our dreams, they become something different, something darker, something mocking. If we choose to do nothing, to not attempt to capture our dreams, they become bitter and steal our hopes and motivations. The dreams become something we can't envision reaching and we become cynical towards them. They point out our flaws and laugh as we convince ourselves we could never reach them. They take away everything they once gave and it is our fault.

We may not be able to do everything we dream of doing, but we can damn well try. Our dreams can change, but they should change because we have moved on to another dream realizing the one we were working on isn't quite what we wanted. They should never change because we gave up believing we could do it. We've all had dreams we gave up on. For many of us, they still haunt us. We should know how much it hurts to give up on a dream and strive to never do it again. We don't want to be haunted by an ever-growing litany of dreams we never really chased.

Your dreams can shape your life. You can continue to give up on them or you can start spending your time chasing them. You can work towards your dreams or you can stay where you are at. Chasing your dreams will give you experience and hope and motivation. Giving up will give you nothing. Chasing your dreams is much more difficult, but will reward you with moments in time emblazoned in your memory. Giving up is easier, but will give you nothing. We can talk about chasing our dreams all we want, but until we start acting on them, nothing really changes. The question you should ask yourself is: "Which dream will I start chasing today?"  

Take the First Step

I think there are many people walking through each day wishing they could figure out their passion and then start following it. I know I have often floundered in the thoughts of wondering what I was supposed to be doing, what would bring fulfillment into my life and what would give the happiness I often seem to be missing. I have struggled with these thoughts and never made any move as I always wanted a plan in place. I needed to know what I was going to do and how I was going to pay the bills and where I was going to end up. This rarely, if ever, happens.

If you speak with anyone who is doing what they love and making a difference in the world, they will all tell you plans tend to change, focus tends to change and the direction tends to change. Every day brings new challenges, new knowledge, new ideas and new paths for us to follow. We will never be able to plan out the rest of our life (or even the rest of the month) because we will never know what is to come. Everything is not going to work the way we want, just because we want something to happen or events to unfold in a certain way. This doesn't mean we are going to fail; it means we are going to make choices along the way to keep on moving forward.

Of course, make some plans, but realize they are very likely to change. Yes, you may need to think about how you are going to pay the bills before making a radical decision. There are always going to be reasons why you should or shouldn't do something and the reasons why you shouldn't are going to be the loudest voices in you head. This voice loathes risk, hates taking chances and abhors change. This voice rarely has anything good to say and focuses on the worst case scenario (and usually even exaggerates these). We are so used to listening to this voice, we usually don't even realize when it is speaking. This voice may seem very rational, but it is not. We all have to learn to listen for this voice of fear and find the best ways to ignore it.

There is one sure way to start your journey towards finding your passion and allowing your purpose to embrace everything you do. Take the first step. Yes, it is going to be scary, but the other option is to sit back and listen to the voice and continue to hope you will one day be smacked in the face with your passion and everything will be given to you on a silver platter. This is never going to happen. Start searching, start doing, start dreaming and start moving towards something. You don't even need to know what that something is just yet, but for most of you reading this, you know what you have now and what you do now isn't everything. For most of us, we have a lot more to offer the world. We have a lot more art to make and the only way we are ever going to find the courage is to start moving forward. Once you start moving, it will take more energy to stop than to keep going. You will never know what doors will open for you along the way unless you take the first step.